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Hi this is Jon and in this clip we'll be inspecting and replacing belts and chains. On a lot of
older snowblowers you'll see a chain, kind of looks like a bicycle chain and that will
be connected from our engine to our auger. Now that's going to allow our auger to rotate
so we can throw the snow. On your chain you want to make sure that it's not too loose
that it will jump off the track but you also want to make sure that it's not too tight
that it's going to cause problems when it tries to turn the auger. In addition you want
to look for any broken or cracked links in the chain and really bad rusted areas will
also need to be addressed. Now if you do find any a bad area in the chain it's always recommended
just to replace the whole chain. However you can also just replace a couple links at a
time if you have some extra links or maybe if you were just want to save a couple dollars.
If we remove the side cover off of our two-cycle engine snowblower we see that there is a belt
inside of it and that also is connected from the motor to the auger. Similar to the chain
we want to check the tension of the belt. Now since the auger is not engaged the belt
is going to be a little bit loose. If I engage the auger the belt tightens up. And when it's
tight there again you don't want to have too much looseness or you don't want it to be
too tight that it won't run properly. So it just should be, have a little play in it.
On our belt itself we want to look for big cracks or breaks or little chunks missing.
It is common to see real small cracks on that belt but what we want to look for are the
real big ones that could potentially cause the belt to break. To replace a belt or a
chain you want to make sure that there is no tension on the belt and you're just going
to slip that off of those gears and then you'll just be able to slip the new one back on.
And there's usually a diagram somewhere on the snowblower. Here in this case it's on
the inside of that side panel and that's going to show you how to wind the belt.